Now The Iris Has Taken Up The Blazonry Of The Year, And The
Tide Of The Tourists Ebbs Westward.
The permanent residents are beginning to talk of hill places to go to
for the hot weather, and all
The available houses in the resort are let.
In a little while the men from China will be coming over for their
holidays, but just at present we are in the thick of the tea season, and
there is no time to waste on frivolities. 'Packing' is a valid excuse
for anything, from forgetting a dinner to declining a tennis party, and
the tempers of husbands are judged leniently. All along the sea face is
an inspiring smell of the finest new-mown hay, and canals are full of
boats loaded up with the boxes jostling down to the harbour. At the club
men say rude things about the arrivals of the mail. There never was a
post-office yet that did not rejoice in knocking a man's Sabbath into
flinders. A fair office day's work may begin at eight and end at six,
or, if the mail comes in, at midnight. There is no overtime or
eight-hours' baby-talk in tea. Yonder are the ships; here is the stuff,
and behind all is the American market. The rest is your own affair.
The narrow streets are blocked with the wains bringing down, in boxes of
every shape and size, the up-country rough leaf. Some one must take
delivery of these things, find room for them in the packed warehouse,
and sample them before they are blended and go to the firing.
More than half the elaborate processes are 'lost work' so far as the
quality of the stuff goes; but the markets insist on a good-looking
leaf, with polish, face and curl to it, and in this, as in other
businesses, the call of the markets is the law. The factory floors are
made slippery with the tread of bare-footed coolies, who shout as the
tea whirls through its transformations. The over-note to the clamour - an
uncanny thing too - is the soft rustle-down of the tea itself - stacked in
heaps, carried in baskets, dumped through chutes, rising and falling in
the long troughs where it is polished, and disappearing at last into the
heart of the firing-machine - always this insistent whisper of moving
dead leaves. Steam-sieves sift it into grades, with jarrings and
thumpings that make the floor quiver, and the thunder of steam-gear is
always at its heels; but it continues to mutter unabashed till it is
riddled down into the big, foil-lined boxes and lies at peace.
A few days ago the industry suffered a check which, lasting not more
than two minutes, lost several hundred pounds of hand-fired tea. It was
something after this way. Into the stillness of a hot, stuffy morning
came an unpleasant noise as of batteries of artillery charging up all
the roads together, and at least one bewildered sleeper waking saw his
empty boots where they 'sat and played toccatas stately at the
clavicord.' It was the washstand really but the effect was awful.
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